Green boost for Liberal Democrats

9.18.47pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 25th Sep 2007

LIBERAL Democrats from Devizes have welcomed the results of an audit of policies of the three main political parties that shows Menzies Campbell's party as the best for the environment.

The audit was carried out by a group of major environmental organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the National Trust, the RSPB, the Woodland Trust and WWF-UK.

It awarded the parties "green lights" according to how green their policies were. The Conservatives scored zero, Labour one and the Liberal Democrats three.

Speaking at a meeting of Liberal Democrat members following the party conference in Brighton, Devizes Constituency Parliamentary Spokesperson Wendy Johnson said the verdict of the green groups was a great boost for the party.

"This audit has confirmed what we have been saying in Devizes for many years," said Wendy Johnson "Liberal Democrats are leading the battle of ideas for protecting the environment and cutting the pollution people cause.

"At our conference last week we debated plans that will put us even further ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. These include plans to shift more people from domestic flights to a greatly improved high speed rail system.

"And we will discussed our plans for cutting income tax by 4p in the pound to 16p, paid for by shifting more of the tax burden onto pollution."